The Enforcement Directorate (ED), Dimapur Sub Zonal Office, has filed a supplementary prosecution complaint (chargesheet) before the Special Court (PMLA), Dimapur in the case of HPZ Token scam, under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. ED had initiated investigation on the basis of an FIR registered by Cyber Crime Police Station, Kohima, Nagaland vide Crime No. 03/2021 dated October 8, 2021, for the offences committed under various sections of the Indian Penal Code against HPZ Token and others. During investigation some other FIRs were also found to be linked with the
same criminal offence i.e. the FIR No. 0006/2021 dated 02.09.2021, registered by CID PS, Ulubari, Guwahati and FIR bearing no. RC2212022E0022 dated 08.06.2022, registered by CBI, EO-III, Delhi and therefore, they were also included in the investigation. During investigation under PMLA, it has been found that it is a large-scale investment scam in which the gullible investors, spread over different parts of the country, were duped of their hard-earned money by fraudulently luring them to make investments through the HPZ Token App on the false pretext of giving high returns on the investments.
The PMLA investigation has revealed the use of large number of mule accounts, shell companies, dummy directors and misuse of the services of the payment aggregators in order to launder the Proceeds of Crime (POC). During the PMLA investigation, the POC have been traced from the point of collection from the victims/investors to the key accused persons of the HPZ Token scam, including Bhupesh Arora and others. The investments from the gullible investors were allegedly collected using several UPI Id’s which were found to be connected to mule accounts maintained with the ICICI Bank. The POC collected in these mule accounts were then transferred to several other shell companies. These shell companies collected the POC by misrepresenting and misusing the services of the payment aggregators like PayU, Aggrepay, Ease buzz, etc. A miniscule part of the POC collected in these shell companies was also returned to the gullible investors in order to gain their trust and induce them to invest more in the scam. From these shell companies, the proceeds were then collected in the accounts maintained by M/s Shigoo Technology Private Limited (STPL) and M/s Lillian Technocab Private Limited (LTPL).
ED reported in the chargesheet that the accounts of STPL and LTPL were used to further transfer the POC to the shell and dubious entities like M/s Digi India Marketing, M/s Analytiq Business Ventures Private Limited, M/s Freebie Solutions Private Limited, M/s Truvinta Solutions Pvt. Ltd, M/s Zavion Trading Pvt. Ltd, M/s Sark Enroll System Private Limited, etc. The investigation has revealed that all these fake concerns were allegedly controlled and managed by Bhupesh Arora and his associates. Bhupesh Arora has allegedly used this network of shell entities, mule accounts, hawala operators, foreign currency exchangers to launder these POC collected from a huge number of gullible investors. The accused Bhupesh Arora is currently under arrest by ED in a separate case of similar nature where again he has duped large number of gullible investors using another fake investment app.
